Canadians' Perceived Stress Of Retirement Planning & RRSPs

Toronto, ON - According to a recent study conducted by Ipsos-Reid on behalf of the RBC Financial Group, planning one's financial future, saving for retirement, and choosing the right RRSP investments are seen as stressful, whereas making an RRSP contribution is not perceived to be very stressful.

When asked to rate each of a list of nine activities on a scale from one to five, where five means the activity is "extremely stressful" and one means it's "not at all stressful," asking for someone's hand in marriage or writing a final exam ranks most stressful and making an RRSP contribution ranks least stressful. The mean average responses for each activity are as follows:

• Asking someone to marry you (3.3)

• Writing a final exam (3.3)

• Making a speech or presentation (3.1)

• Asking for a raise (3.1)

• Planning your financial future (2.9)

• Choosing the right RRSP investments (2.8)

• Saving for a comfortable retirement (2.8)

• Going to the dentist (2.6)

• Making an RRSP contribution (2.1)

These are some of the findings of an Ipsos-Reid poll conducted on behalf of the RBC Financial Group between November 4th and November 23rd, 2004. The poll is based on a randomly selected sample of 1,201 adult Canadians from the Ipsos-Reid Online Panel. With a sample of this size, the results are considered accurate to within 1772.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what they would have been had the entire adult Canadian population been polled. The margin of error will be larger within regions and for other sub-groupings of the survey population. These data were statistically weighted to ensure the sample's regional and age/sex composition reflects that of the actual Canadian population according to the 2001 Census data.

Please open the attached PDFs to view the factum and detailed tables.

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For more information on this news release, please contact:

John Wright
Senior Vice-President
Ipsos-Reid Public Affairs
(416) 324-2900